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[404] The country had long ago awaked from its early dream of a coming ‘Napoleon,’ and there was no danger of its cherishing any such delusion respecting General Grant; but it saw in him a steadfast, pertinacious commander, one who faithfully represented the practical, patient, persevering genius of the North. As it was his happy fortune to reach the high office of general-in-chief at a time when the Administration and the people, instructed somewhat in war and war's needs, were prepared to give him an intelligent support, he was at once able, with all the resources of the country at his call, with a million men in the field, and a generous and patriotic people at his back, to enter upon a comprehensive system of combined operations. Moreover, the instrument given him to work withal was one highly tempered and brought to a fine and hard edge. The troops had become, by the experience of service, thoroughly inured to war. They could march, manoeuvre, and fight. The armies, in fact, were real armies, and were, therefore, prepared to execute operations that at an earlier period would have been utterly impracticable. The lieutenant-general was committed by the whole bent of his nature to vigorous action; and, upon taking into his hand the baton, he resolved upon a gigantic aggressive system that should embrace simultaneous blows throughout the whole continental theatre of war. His theory of action looked to the employment of the maximum of force against the armies of the Confederates, to such a direction of this power as would engage the entire force of the enemy at one and the same time, and to delivering a series of heavy and uninterrupted blows in the style of what the Duke of Wellington used to call ‘hard pounding,’ and of what General Grant has designated as ‘continuous hammering.’ The armed force of the Confederacy was at this time mainly included in the two great armies of Johnston and Lee—the former occupying an intrenched position at Dalton, Georgia, the latter ensconced within the lines of the Rapidan. These bodies were still almost as powerful in numbers as any the South
1866.
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